Standard in Casual: Scars to Phyrexia

Well it's been a little while since I've talked about a block - about 1 block!  So today, I'd like to talk about some of the things that I've been leaning on in Standard Constructed the last several months.  Again, I won't be talking about the block's mythics, but some other things I feel deserve to be discussed a little more than they have. 

1. Tempered Steel

Wow.  I know this is getting more play these days, but back when Scars first busted out I didn't see too many of these being played - even though it pretty much seized me from day 1!  I've had the most luck playing with this Enchantment, more than any other deck I've been able to construct.  

There's two different deck tactics to use with this, and I've been very successful with both.  Both are mono white, and use artifacts A LOT, except for the obligatory Revoke Existence and Condemn.

Try it with the following:  Signal Pest, Ornithopter, Memnite, Pierce Strider, Peace Strider and Steel Hellkite!  Fast and furious!  I'll talk about my other idea, my favorite Tempered Steel deck...

2. Myr Battlesphere

Ok, this is ridiculous.  Here's how it goes, assuming 3 lands by turn 5.  Turn 1, Land.  Turn 2, Land and Gold Myr.  Turn 3, Palladium Myr.  Turn 4, Myr Turbine.  Turn 5-7, tap Turbine for Myr and cast Tempered Steel or other myr.  On Turn 7 (or whenever you reach 5 myr and a turbine), and every turn thereafter, use Turbine to fetch Myr Battlesphere.  Don't sweat your opponent's removal, it's rarely enough.

It gets more ridiculous if you add Myr Galvanizer, Darksteel Myr and Hovermyr - which incidentally are my favorite myr!  Now, think about the Battlesphere's ability.  You have two battlespheres, two galvanizers and an army of smaller myr boosted by Tempered Steel.  You can blast your opponent with two rounds of Battlesphere bangs and THEN have them all untap to defend!

3. Skinrender

My hatred of phyrexians is well documented, so why would I bring this up here?

Well there are two phyrexian cards I actually like, and I feel it's a terrible pity they are phyrexian, because I don't use those spells.  AT ALL.

Well, the aforementioned Pierce Strider is still a favorite.  The other phyrexian card I hate so much I use it is the ubiquitous Skinrender.  This is a great removal spell that's a bargain for black at 4 mana for a 3/3, but add to that what is basically a death sentence for an enemy creature and presto!  Instant Constructed goodness!

It's enough for me to include in my Constructed black removal deck.

That's all I've got to say for now.  We'll be doing an M12 draft at the end of The Rough Edge of Night, and Innistrad will be right behind that, so October is going to be a big month for our club's Magic nights!

I'll try to keep the posting faster in September, so give us some clicks!  

Tournament Day in Mirrodin-Town!

Hey Folks!

Sorry for the delay in posting, it's been almost a week!  I've been studying hard, getting the new sections ready to go up.  Today, I'm gonna talk about our first Magic: The Gathering prize draft here at the Wargate, which happened to be an awesome success!  Everyone had loads of fun for several hours, and walked away with something tangible for their efforts!

Everyone knows that I like Magic, but let me explain why.  I think the Draft tournament format is one of the better gaming experiences that one can have, even if you don't play with cards all the time or even have very much experience with Magic.  However, when a new environment comes along, there is a great opportunity for everyone to dive in all at the same level.  Now, we don't do a whole lot of cards over here at the gate, but I think this might become a staple for in-between larger campaigns.  It took the whole day to do the tournament (not because some folk turned up an hour late but hey, that helped) even though we had planned to start Pathfinder that evening.  Everyone turned up and had a great time in slightly different kind of atmosphere than normal here at the Wargate.  Check out everyone in their Sunday best, below!

A booster draft has tons of opportunities for really cool gaming.  Infect decks took the day, even though I managed to draft both Elspeth Tirel AND Venser, the Sojourner during the first pack!  A lot of folk drafted white / blue, so the pickings were slim but we all managed to eke out pretty nasty decks.  Greg and Skim had some bad luck, but for Skim's first time playing Magic since the 1990's I think he did awesome during the tournament!  Better luck for those guys in Mirrodin Besieged, the second part of the new Scars block and our next draft tournament, scheduled for sometime in February.

Here are the winners from the draft!  Here you can see Josh and Shawn holding the banner, with three packs each!  That's right - those two guys won all three of their matches, and they were running Infect!  We had a ton of fun, and look forward to busting through the rest of the multiverse with Booster Drafts, now a staple at the Wargate!

Later this week we'll be posting about D&D Realms, new campaign pages and lots more!  Check back every other day this week, it's gonna be awesome to the head!

Scars of Mirrodin Draft Tournament!

Greetings!  Dave Bone here, and today I've come to tell you about our Magic: The Gathering tournament we'll be hosting for Scars of Mirrodin this weekend at the Wargate!

We've got plenty of strategy gamers here, and a few of us still sling cards around, even if it is mostly on the internet these days!  We've had plenty of time to play around in the new environment, and now we're going to see if any of us have what it takes to make it in a competitive environment.  Draft tournaments are easy to run, fun as all get-out to play in and even better to win at!

It's going to be a fun day with the club, but I want to take a moment and go over a few things just so we have them recorded all official-like.  Nothing too heavy, but we have promised prizes to the winning players so we have to have a tiny bit of interpretable legalese.  Or something.

Anyways, for those of you who've never played in a draft tourney, let me sketch it out for you how it's going to go.  First, we'll open the box and issue each of the 8 players 3 packs of Scars of Mirrodin.  Each player will open the 15 card pack and take 1 card from it, as his top pick.  The remaining 14 cards are passed to the player on the right, who then takes a card from those.  We continue passing the packs to the right, and each player takes one card from it each time until all the cards are picked.  Then we do the next pack (passing to the left), and the next (to the right), until each player has 45 cards (3 packs worth) to select his deck from.

Once all the packs have been drafted, it's time to build a deck.  Now, there's tons of strategy articles out there about drafting and aggressive selection, and I totally encourage you to check out a few articles around the web on such subjects, but I won't be going into that in detail in this article.  Decks will be 40 cards minimum.
Lands are going to be provided by the Wargate, so you'll get to have as many basic lands as you want.  This means that from your set of 45 cards that you drafted, you'll use approximately half of them in your deck.

After decks are built, the games begin!  Each player has been randomly assigned their opponents for each round and a tracker has been placed on the board at the Wargate.  There will be 3 rounds, each with four different matches running simultaneously.

Winning is simple.  The tournament matches will be best 2 of 3 games.  After each match, a marker will be placed by the winners name.  We're going to use a very simple scoring system, so at the end of the tournament you win a pack of Scars of Mirrodin for each match you win.  Simple.

We want to make these drafts a part of the Wargate's curriculum, so give us plenty of feedback on this!  We might start with having a Draft Tournament after each expansion comes out (3 months or so), or it could be a monthly occurrence depending on that feedback, so let us know what you think!

Until then, beware the frakkin' Memnites!!